North Korea 'has two nuclear bombs'

By David Rennie in Washington

12:01AM BST 18 Oct 2002

North Korea possesses two plutonium-based nuclear bombs, a senior Bush administration official said yesterday. It was the first official confirmation that a member of President Bush's "Axis of Evil" has obtained nuclear weapons.

"It is our assessment that North Korea has reprocessed before 1994 sufficient plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons," the official said, asking to remain anonymous. When pressed he said North Korea had two bombs.

A senior US official suggested that North Korea, which is ruled by Kim Jong-il, an unpredictable, despotic leader, may have had foreign help in creating its uranium enrichment programme.

The official told reporters in Washington that, according to US studies of other attempts to produce enriched uranium: "This has never been done indigenously. . . these programmes are dependent on support from the outside."

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said that although no western intelligence official had physically laid a hand on a North Korean nuclear warhead: "I believe they have a small number of nuclear weapons."